Thailand welcomes Twitter's new censorship policy

BANGKOK (AP) ? Thailand is welcoming Twitter's new policy to censor tweets in specific nations where the content might break laws.

Technology minister Anudith Nakornthap said Monday the new policy was a "constructive" development. The Southeast Asian country routinely blocks websites with content deemed offensive to the Thai monarchy.

Anudith said it was good that Twitter "felt responsible to cooperate with governments to make sure basic rights are not violated through the use of social media."

Thailand's taskforce that monitors anti-monarchy content has blocked 1,156 websites since December.

Twitter has been a tool of free speech and dissent around the world and its policy change last week ignited global outrage. The U.S. State Department credited Twitter with being upfront about the policy but reserved comment otherwise.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-01-30-AS-Thailand-Censorship/id-c18e06d2c01848dc9cc9e926dec1476c

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'Extremist' speaker at West Point draws protests

U.S. Army via Getty Images

Retired Lt. General William G. Boykin is seen in front of a flag. He has been criticized for anti-Muslim remarks.

By Jeff Black, msnbc.com

The Army is drawing protests from veterans? and Islamic groups for inviting a?retired general who?many have called anti-Muslim to speak at a West Point prayer breakfast.

Lt. Gen William G. Boykin has been criticized for speeches at evangelical Christian churches in which he made disparaging remarks about Islam. Boykin has?said that Muslims are trying to implement Shariah Law in the United States and that?Islam is the greatest threat America faces.

According to The Associated Press, Boykin has also said that America's enemy was Satan, that God had put President George W. Bush in the White House and that one Muslim Somali warlord was an idol-worshipper.

---

Groups?such as?VoteVets.org, Military Religious Freedom Foundation, as well as?Forum on Military Chaplaincy?all?petitioned the?Pentagon to stop Boykin from speaking at the Feb. 8 breakfast, Stars and Stripes reported.

VoteVets.org told Army Gen. Raymond Odierno in a letter that allowing retired Boykin to speak at the Feb. 3 National Prayer Breakfast Service would be contrary to Army values and disrespectful to Muslim cadets.

'Incompatible with Army values'
"These remarks are incompatible with the Army values, and a person who is incompatible with Army values should not address the cadets of the United States Military Academy," VoteVets chairman Jon Soltz said in the letter, according to The Associated Press.

Army public affairs didn't immediately comment, though West Point's Lt. Col. Sherri Reed said cadets are "purposefully exposed to different perspectives and cultures" during their four years at the academy.

"The National Prayer Breakfast Service will be pluralistic with Christians, Jewish, and Muslim cadets participating," Reed said in a prepared statement. "We are comfortable and confident that what retired Lt. Gen. Boykin will share about prayer, soldier care and selfless service, will be in keeping with the broad range of ideas normally considered by our cadets."

The Council on American-Islamic Relations is also asking officials to retract the invitation.

?Having a guy like that speak at a respected institution like the U.S. Military Academy gives credibility to his extremist views of hatred toward Muslims,? Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for Council on American Islamic Relations, told msnbc.com. ?We are strong defenders of the First Amendment. What we are saying is that he not be allowed to spread views at West Point. He can go shout his hatred on the streets if he wants to.?

Hooper calls the argument that Boykin represents an alternative viewpoint ?ridiculous,? and equates it with inviting a racist white leader to speak at West Point since some of the cadets are African American.

?I doubt that they would invite a KKK speaker and claim that they want to expose the students to a variety of opinions," CAIR?s national executive director, Nihad Awad, told the Associated Press, referring to the hate group the Ku Klux Klan.

Just last week, CAIR and People for the American Way had asked officials in Maryland to rescind an invitation for Boykin to speak at a prayer breakfast. Boykin attended and spoke about his faith and did not mention Islam.

Before his retirement in 2002, Boykin was chastised by military commanders for comparing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to a holy war. Boykin later issued a written statement apologizing and said he didn't mean to insult Islam.

Pentagon investigation concluded that Boykin violated regulations by failing to make clear he was not speaking in an official capacity when he made nearly two dozen church speeches beginning in January 2002. It also found that Boykin, who made most speeches wearing his uniform, didn't get prior clearance for the remarks.

Boykin couldn't immediately be reached by msnbc.com for comment.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

More content from msnbc.com and NBC News

Source: http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/30/10273196-extremist-speaker-at-west-point-draws-protests

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Liverpool scores late to edge Man United in FA Cup

/

updated 5:58 p.m. ET Jan. 28, 2012

LONDON - Liverpool reached the fifth round of the FA Cup on Saturday at the expense of its fiercest rival, a last-gasp 2-1 victory over Manchester United leaving the famous competition without the English Premier League's top two teams.

While Chelsea progressed with a 1-0 win at Queens Park Rangers thanks to Juan Mata's second-half penalty, Netherlands forward Dirk Kuyt scored the winner for Liverpool in the 88th minute at Anfield.

United earlier dumped out neighbor Manchester City ? the Premier League leader and defending FA Cup champion ? in the fourth round, leaving the world's oldest club knockout competition wide open this year.

Second-tier Brighton beat Premier League Newcastle 1-0 at Amex Stadium in another Cup match that Magpies defender Mike Williamson will want to forget.

Williamson deflected in Will Buckley's close-range effort for the only goal 14 minutes from time. The defender also scored an own goal last season when Newcastle lost to then League Two side Stevenage in the third round of the competition.

Bolton beat Swansea 2-1 and Norwich won by the same scoreline at West Bromwich Albion in the other all-Premier League matchups, while Stoke ? which lost the 2011 final to Man City ? also progressed with a 2-0 win at Derby.

Arsenal hosts Aston Villa on Sunday.

Liverpool and United met for the first time since the unsavory race row between Luis Suarez and Patrice Evra erupted in a Premier League match between them in October.

Evra, United's captain on Saturday, was booed throughout while Suarez watched from the stands as he served the seventh of his eight-game ban for repeatedly racially abusing the France defender.

The match passed without trouble, however, with United manager Alex Ferguson saying: "The players showed great respect to each other ? there wasn't a bad tackle in the game."

Denmark center back Daniel Agger's opener for Liverpool in the 21st minute was canceled out by United's Park Ji-sung six minutes before the break in a first half edged by the visitors, despite being without a raft of key players including the injured Wayne Rooney.

Kuyt settled the match when he ran to a flick-on by Andy Carroll and beat United goalkeeper David de Gea at the near post.

___

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) ? Three days after Barcelona ended its Copa del Rey title defense, Real Madrid came from behind to beat last-place Zaragoza 3-1 on Saturday as its campaign rolled on to break its fierce rival's hold on the Spanish league title.

Three days after Barcelona ended Real Madrid's Copa del Rey title defense, the Spanish champions' own hopes of a fourth successive league dimmed after a 0-0 draw at Villarreal on Saturday.

Barcelona's slip let Madrid move seven points clear of its fierce rival just past the season's midway point through its earlier 3-1 comeback win over last-place Zaragoza.

Lionel Messi missed with a chip shot early, and Cesc Fabregas hit the crossbar late in Barcelona's best scoring chances.

Zaragoza, which upset Madrid at home late last season, started well with Angel Lafita scoring an 11th-minute opener.

But Kaka leveled for Madrid in the 32nd, and Cristiano Ronaldo and Mesut Oezil added two more shortly after halftime at Santiago Bernabeu Stadium.

Ronaldo has scored in each of Madrid's last four games, and his 24 league goals are best in Spain, two ahead of Barcelona's Lionel Messi, who was playing later Saturday against Villarreal.

Madrid has won nine of 10 league home games this season, with its only home loss to Barcelona in December.

"Every game is tough. Zaragoza is a good team and they showed it with a quick goal," Madrid midfielder Esteban Granero said. "But we gave it our all and were able to turn it around."

After his team's strong performance in its closely fought elimination by Barcelona on Wednesday, Madrid coach Jose Mourinho opted again for an attack-minded starting 11 with rarely used Granero and Kaka in midfield behind Oezil and scoring pair Karim Benzema and Ronaldo.

Fernando Llorente scored a hat trick to give Athletic Bilbao a 3-2 win at Rayo Vallecano.

After Miguel "Michu" Perez's opener for Rayo, Llorente headed in a free kick to level in the 16th minute, and added a second when he controlled a pass with his chest, spun and fired from the edge of the area in the 23rd.

Alejandro Arribas drew Rayo even moments later, but Llorente headed home Gaizka Toquero's cross for the 68th-minute winner and his 11th league goal of the season.

Bilbao, which plays third-tier Mirandes in the Copa del Rey semifinals this week, moved into sixth place.

Also, Espanyol edged 10-man Mallorca 1-0 to climb level on points with fourth-place Levante.

___

BERLIN (AP) ? Bayern Munich beat Wolfsburg 2-0 to remain top of the Bundesliga on goal difference, just ahead of Borussia Dortmund and Schalke.

All three are tied at 40 points, but Bayern will be looking nervously over its shoulder after Dortmund brushed Hoffenheim aside 3-1 and then Schalke came from behind to win 4-1 in Cologne.

American Fabian Johnson scored his second goal of the season for Hoffenheim, and his first in the Bundesliga since Dec. 5, 2009. His other goal this season was in the German Cup last July 31.

Dortmund was already 3-0 up at home through two goals from Shinji Kagawa and another from Kevin Grosskreutz, before league scoring leader Mario Gomez's 60th-minute strike allowed Bayern a sigh of relief.

Dutch winger Arjen Robben sealed the points in an edgy win for Bayern with a goal in injury time.

"We had a lot of chances and for me this win is fully deserved," Bayern coach Jupp Heynckes said. "The win gives us security so we can continue like this in the coming weeks."

Werder Bremen drew 1-1 with Bayer Leverkusen, Hamburger SV won 2-1 at Hertha Berlin, and Augsburg and Kaiserslautern played out a 2-2 draw in a relegation battle.

___

MILAN (AP) ? Juventus' charge towards the Serie A title gathered pace with a 2-1 win over third-place Udinese in falling snow on Saturday.

Alessandro Matri scored either side of Antonio Floro Flores' equalizer to help unbeaten leader Juventus move four points clear of second-placed AC Milan, which faces Cagliari on Sunday.

Udinese was two points further back and could be caught by Inter Milan, which visits Lecce on Sunday.

"I was worried a lot about this game because Udinese is a team which plays very interesting football and has a lot of talented players who make up a great team," Juve coach Antonio Conte said.

"Towards the end we were obviously tired after the Italian Cup, but we controlled the game well and got an important win. However, today we lost too many balls in midfield and so gave Udinese too much space to counterattack."

Catania was held to 1-1, a result which did neither team any favors in the standings.

Gonzalo Bergessio gave Catania a deserved lead shortly after the half-hour mark, but Francesco Modesto leveled 10 minutes later.

The tie left Parma nine points above the relegation zone before the rest of the weekend's fixtures. Catania, which has won only one of its past seven games, was tied with Cagliari a point further back.

___

PARIS (AP) ? Big-spending Paris Saint-Germain needed a scrappy 1-0 win over Brest to keep a three-point lead over Montpellier at the top of the French league.

PSG defender Milan Bisevac flicked home a corner from Christophe Jallet in the sixth minute.

Brest lost its first home match this season while PSG has now won all four games under coach Carlo Ancelotti, who replaced Antoine Kombouare last month.

Also Saturday, it was: Nice 0, Montpellier 1; Lyon 3, Dijon 1; Toulouse 1, Caen 0; Lorient 1, Sochaux 1; and Auxerre 1, Nancy 3.

Lille hosts Saint-Etienne later Saturday.

___

ATHENS, Greece (AP) ? Olympiakos closed within two points of Greek league leader Panathinaikos by defeating stubborn visitor Ergotelis 3-0.

Ergotelis ended the game with nine players, as Mario Hieblinger and Andreas Bouhalakis were shown second yellow cards for rough challenges in the 56th and 60th minutes, respectively.

Also, OFI beat Xanthi 1-0 and Panionios defeated Kerkyra 2-0.

Panathinaikos travels to last-place Drama on Sunday.

___

GLASGOW, Scotland (AP) ? Rangers kept the pressure on Scottish Premier League leader Celtic with a 4-0 thrashing of 10-man Hibernian.

Captain Steven Davis scored two goals.

Celtic, whose lead was trimmed to one point, was not in league action this weekend. Instead, Neil Lennon's team will face Falkirk in the semifinal of the Scottish League Cup on Sunday.

Motherwell tightened its grip on third place, six points ahead of Hearts, by beating St. Johnstone 3-2.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Arsenal advances in FA Cup

??Roundup: Arsenal kept its bid to end a seven-year trophy drought on track Sunday, scoring three times in eight second-half minutes to beat Aston Villa 3-2 and reach the fifth round of the FA Cup.

Bragging rights

Abby Wambach and Christine Sinclair have spent the last two weeks chasing each other, chasing history and chasing a place in the London Olympics.

Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/46175745/ns/sports-soccer/

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Movie Scores: How the critics rated the new movies (AP)

LOS ANGELES ? Liam Neeson continues to impress critics with his reinvention as an action hero as he approaches 60 in this weekend's "The Grey."

Neeson stars as one of a group of oil-rig workers who find themselves stranded in the snowy Alaskan wilderness when their plane to Anchorage crashes. AP Entertainment Writer Jake Coyle only gave the movie two stars out of four, though, saying: "`The Grey' is not `Jaws,' and it's certainly not `Moby-Dick.' In the script by (director Joe) Carnahan and Ian Mackenzie Jeffers, adapted from Jeffers' short story `Ghost Walker,' the philosophical subtext is forced and obvious."

Also opening this weekend to far less favorable reviews is "Man on a Ledge," starring Sam Worthington as a disgraced New York cop who threatens to jump off the 21st floor of a hotel to deflect attention from a heist going on across the street. AP Movie Critic Christy Lemire gave it one and a half stars out of four, writing: "`Man on a Ledge' is so cliched and reheated, it almost feels like a parody of a generic action picture ? only no one seems to be in on the joke."

Here's a look at how these movies and others fared on the top review websites as of Friday afternoon. Each score is the percentage of positive reviews for the film:

? "The Grey": Metacritic, 64; Movie Review Intelligence, 63.5; Rotten Tomatoes, 76. Average: 67.8.

? "Albert Nobbs": Metacritic, 58; Movie Review Intelligence, 64.2; Rotten Tomatoes, 53. Average: 58.4.

? "Man on a Ledge": Metacritic, 40; Movie Review Intelligence, 42.9; Rotten Tomatoes, 22. Average: 35.

? "One for the Money": Metacritic, 13; Movie Review Intelligence, 11; Rotten Tomatoes, 0. Average: 8.

___

Online:

http://www.metacritic.com/

http://moviereviewintelligence.com/

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/movies/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120127/ap_en_mo/us_movie_scores

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Deep Life

Forget E.T. It?s time to meet the intraterrestrials.

They too are alien, appearing in bizarre forms and eluding scientists? search efforts. But instead of residing out in space, these aliens inhabit a dark subterranean realm, munching and cycling energy deep inside the Earth.

Most intraterrestrials live beneath the bottom of the ocean, in an unseen biosphere that is a melting pot of odd organisms, a sort of Deep Space Nine for microbes. Many make their homes in the tens of meters of mud just beneath the seafloor. Others slither deeper, along fractures into solid rock hundreds of meters down.

Scientists are just beginning to probe this undersea world. In the middle of the South Pacific, oceanographers have discovered how bacteria survive in nutrient-poor, suffocating sediment. Off the coast of Washington state, other researchers have watched microbes creep into and colonize a borehole 280 meters below the seafloor, flushed by water circulating through the ocean crust. And near the underwater mountain ridge that marks the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, scientists have yanked up organisms that may be unlike any known sub-seafloor residents.

Such discoveries are helping biologists piece together a picture of a deep, seething ecosystem. Knowing how this world arose, researchers say, will help them understand more about the origin of life on Earth. One day intraterrestrials could even tell scientists more about extraterrestrials, by helping sketch out the extremes under which life can not only survive but even thrive.

Oceanic desert

Considering that oceans cover most of the planet, it?s a no-brainer to try to figure out what?s living in the mud and rock beneath them. ?It?s really the most massive potential habitat on Earth,? says microbiologist Beth Orcutt of Aarhus University in Denmark.

By some estimates, as much as one-third of the planet?s biomass ? the sheer weight of all its living organisms ? is buried beneath the ocean floor. Many of these bacteria and other microbes survive on food that drifts down from above, such as the remains of plankton that once blossomed in the sunlight of the ocean?s upper reaches.

These hardy microbes manage to eke out an existence even where it shouldn?t be possible. In the middle of the South Pacific, for instance, lies an oceanic vortex where water circulates in a huge eddy, or gyre, twice the size of North America. Because the gyre is so far from any landmasses ? from which nutrients wash off and help spur plankton growth and other ocean productivity ? it is essentially a giant oceanic desert, says Steven D?Hondt of the University of Rhode Island?s oceanography school in Narragansett.

In some places in the gyre, seafloor mud builds up as slowly as eight centimeters per million years. That means if you wanted to plant a tulip bulb at the usual gardener?s depth of about 16 centimeters, D?Hondt says, you?d be digging into mud that is 2 million years old.

Such low-productivity regions in the centers of oceans are far more common than nutrient-rich coastal zones, but scientists don?t often visit the deserts because they are hard to get to. In the autumn of 2010, though, D?Hondt led a cruise to the South Pacific Gyre that drilled into the dull seafloor mud and pulled up cores. ?We wanted to see what life was like in sediment in the deadest part of the ocean,? he says.

Among other things, the scientists discovered how microbes in the mud might cope. In other areas of the ocean, where more nutrients fall to the seafloor, oxygen is found only in the uppermost centimeter or two of mud; any deeper than that and it gets eaten up. But in the South Pacific Gyre, D?Hondt?s team found that oxygen penetrates all the way through the seafloor cores, up to 80 meters of sediment. To the scientists, this finding suggests that these mud microbes breathe very slowly and so don?t use up all the available oxygen. ?That violates standard expectations,? says D?Hondt, ?but until we went out there and drilled, nobody knew.?

Another possibility is that the microbes have a separate, unusual source of energy: natural radioactivity. Radioactive decay of elements in the underlying mud and rocks bombards the water with particles that can split H2O into hydrogen and oxygen, a process known as radiolysis. Microbes can then consume those elements, sustaining themselves over time with a near-endless supply of food. ?That?s the most exotic interpretation,? D?Hondt says, ?that we have an ecosystem living off of natural radioactivity that is splitting water molecules apart.?

Easy access

Thousands of miles north and east of drilling sites in the South Pacific Gyre, other scientists are exploring a very different alien realm in the Juan de Fuca Ridge, an underwater mountain range marking the convergence of several great plates of Earth?s crust. Juan de Fuca is one of those coastal areas getting plenty of nutrients from nearby British Columbia and Washington state, and scientists can get there relatively quickly.

As a result, the Juan de Fuca area may be the world?s best-instrumented seafloor. A network of observatories sprawls across the ocean bottom; in one spot, six borehole monitoring stations lie within about 2.5 kilometers of each other. One of the stations is hooked up to the shore via underwater cables, so that scientists sitting at their desks can track the data in real time. ?We can do active experiments there that we can?t do anywhere else in the ocean,? says Andrew Fisher, a hydrogeologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz who helped set up much of the instrumentation.

Many of the stations are observatories known as CORKs, a tortured acronym for ?circulation obviation retrofit kit,? which essentially means a deep hole in the seafloor plugged at the top to keep seawater out. Researchers lower a string of instruments into the hole, then come back several years later to retrieve them. Data from CORKs can reveal what organisms live at what depths within the borehole, as well as how microbial populations change over time.

CORKs are technically challenging to install, but sometimes glitches can yield unexpected discoveries. At one Juan de Fuca site, researchers tucked experiments down a hole in 2004. After retrieving rock chips that had dangled in the hole for four years, the team saw twisted stalks that looked like rust coating the surfaces. It turned out that the CORK hadn?t been properly sealed, and iron-oxidizing bacteria leaked in along with seawater.

Those bacteria initially colonized the borehole and built up the stalks, thriving on the cold and oxygen-rich conditions carried in by the seawater. But over the next few years the borehole began to warm up, thanks to volcanic heat percolating from below. Water from within the surrounding ocean crust began to rise and push out the seawater, reversing the flow within the hole. The iron-loving bacteria died and other types of organisms began to appear: bacteria known as firmicutes, which are found in similarly exotic environments such as the Arctic Ocean?s bottom. ?For us that?s a really interesting finding and a kind of nice serendipitous experiment,? says Orcutt, who published the work with her colleagues last year in the International Society for Microbial Ecology Journal.

Research at Juan de Fuca also shows how water flushes through the ocean crust, offering clues to the best places to look for microbes. People tend to think of water sitting on top of the seafloor, says Fisher, but in fact water zips through undersea rocks ? cycling the equivalent of the ocean?s entire volume through the crust every half-million years or so.

At Juan de Fuca, Fisher and colleagues have spotted two underwater volcanoes, about 50 kilometers apart, that help explain how such high rates of flow might happen. CORK observations reveal that water flows into one of the mountains and flushes out the other. ?This is the first place anywhere on the seafloor where researchers have been able to put their finger on a map and say ?the water goes in here and out here,? ? Fisher says.

Those two volcanoes are arranged along a north-south line that tends to control much of the undersea activity at Juan de Fuca, he says. Most of the fractures in the ocean crust here run north to south, making that the probable direction in which microbes also move. The cracks serve as a sort of microbial superhighway, allowing the microbes to flow along easily, carried by water. Scientists looking for more sub-seafloor microbes might want to also focus on these areas, Fisher says: ?You?ll see very different populations along the superhighways than along the back roads.?

Pond swimmers

Far from being monolithic, the seafloor is home to a surprising range of different environments. One new target, much different from Juan de Fuca or the South Pacific Gyre, is a spot in the mid-Atlantic known as North Pond. Geologists have studied this place, at 22 degrees north of the equator, since the 1970s for what it can reveal about the processes that form young crust at mid-ocean ridges. Now microbiologists are also targeting North Pond for what it can say about deep life.

The ?pond? of North Pond is a pile of undersea mud, cradled against the side of tall jagged mountains. It lies about five kilometers from where seafloor crust is actively being born; all that violent geologic activity pushes water quickly through the mud and rocks and out into the ocean above. Compared with Juan de Fuca, the water at North Pond is much cooler ? roughly 10? Celsius, as opposed to 60? C to 70? C ? but flows much faster. ?Nature finds a balance between temperature and flow,? says Fisher.

He and his colleagues, led by Katrina Edwards of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and Wolfgang Bach of the University of Bremen in Germany, spent 10 weeks at North Pond last autumn. They installed two new CORKs, up to 330 meters deep, and pulled up samples of rock and water to test for any microbes that might be living there. The scientists also tucked long dangling strings of rock chips into the holes and plan to return in the years ahead to see what organisms might appear. ?It was a great success,? says Edwards. ?We set ourselves up for a good decade?s worth of work out at North Pond.?

For now, it?s up to microbiologists back on land to make sense of what?s there. Researchers are just starting to culture the slow-growing microbes pulled up at North Pond, but already they suspect they?ll find surprises.

Overall, studies at different locales reveal that deep-sea microbes are far more diverse than scientists had thought even a decade ago, says micro?biologist Jennifer Biddle of the University of Delaware in Newark. Rather than just a couple of broad classes, researchers have found a rich diversity of bacteria along with archaea ? other single-celled organisms with an older evolutionary history ? plus fungi, viruses and more. ?We were shocked it was so complicated,? says Biddle. ?We thought there was maybe five Bunsens and 10 Beakers, and it turns out there?s the entire cast of the Muppets in there.?

By comparing microbes from different seafloor sites, Biddle has found surprisingly high amounts of archaea compared with bacteria in some places. She thinks that archaea may be thriving on organic matter in seafloor mud, so nutrient-rich coasts have more archaea than sediments in the middle of the ocean. ?The jury?s still out on that one,? she says.

A new project known as the Census of Deep Life will help Biddle and others analyze and compare more of the sub-seafloor microbes. The census could take as long as a decade; the idea is to find overarching rules ? if they exist ? that describe where and how organisms thrive in the seafloor. ?Right now you can get some idea of that by looking at the sorts of energy sources that are present in the subsurface,? says census leader Rick Colwell, a microbiologist at Oregon State University in Corvallis. ?But do fractures in various subsurface environments, worldwide, contain certain types of microorganisms consistently??

Plenty of data should be forthcoming. ?We?re not suffering from a lack of things to do,? Orcutt says. Edwards and her team plan to return to North Pond in April to retrieve their first set of instruments. Fisher will go back to Juan de Fuca next summer, in what may be a final visit before turning his attention elsewhere. Next on his wish list: a site off Costa Rica where water flows through the crust some thousands of times faster than at Juan de Fuca.

One day, analyzing the deep biosphere may help NASA and other space agencies in their hunt for life elsewhere in the solar system. At North Pond, expedition scientists have tested out a new tool that, once lowered into a borehole, illuminates the hole?s walls using ultraviolet light. Because living cells turn fluorescent at specific wavelengths, the light can be used to spot films of organic matter coating the hole. This probe, or some elaboration on it, could end up flying on future space missions. And then the intraterrestrials could help scientists find extraterrestrials.

Found in: Earth and Life

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/337918/title/Deep_Life

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Money Well Spent? (Taegan Goddard's Political Wire)

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2011-2012 University of Arizona Football Schedule and Basketball Schedule Poster

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	Home?>?Posters 2011-2012 University of Arizona Football Schedule and Basketball Schedule Poster Part Number?8 Football Schedule Side Email a friend Review this item Price Your Price: ? $7.99 On sale:? $5.99 Availability: In Stock Quantity Add to Gift Registry Description Includes University of Arizona Football and Basketball Schedules Lined with 72 Perforated Coupons

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